We’ve all been watching for a while now as online and brick and mortar retail have collided and converged. We know it’s here to stay and that there’s a lot of evolving left to do. None of us know what the end product will look like (though maybe it’s better to acknowledge that there is no end
Another Possible Retail Future Read More »
The Leisure Trends Group does a lot of good work. On October 20th, they sent out an email you may have seen announcing record September outdoor retail sales of $462 million up 17% over a year ago. Leisure Trends analyst Scott Jaeger said it was the strongest September since they started keeping records in 1998. Great news
September’s Leap in Outdoor Sales Read More »
Sometimes I just can’t help myself. Many years ago, I wrote an article called “Are There Any Core Shops Left?” My good friend and editor at the time Sean O’Brien thought enough of it to put it on the Transworld web site for discussion. Without telling me. In hindsight, his instincts were good, but I was the slightest bit
There Is No Action Sports Industry. Or Maybe It’s the Same as its Always Been Read More »
In a rapid and rather remarkable convergence of four key trends, a lot is changing for core retailers and for retail in general. The accelerating push of large brands into retail, their reduced dependence on core shops, the decline in the number of true core shops, and the financial/management model required in our new economic
I was recently paging through a couple of Transworld consumer mags (Surf and Skate I think) and something caught my attention. I don’t know what made me notice it, but I suddenly realized there was not one non-endemic advertisement in either mag. Okay, maybe I missed one, but there was no Ford Trucks, Mountain Dew, AT&T or
An Interesting Advertising Observation; What Does it Mean? Read More »
The issues that smaller retailers are facing haven’t changed much. There are too many retail stores, pressure from chains, brand stores and big boxes, a tough financial model, the challenge of keeping margins up, lack of product differentiation, increasing costs, over distribution. That’s a cheery environment, isn’t it? You’ve got a choice. You can bemoan the unfairness
What Forward Thinking Retailers are Doing: Trends That Probably Won’t Surprise Anybody Read More »
Seems a silly question I suppose. Action sports are what we do. It’s what we’ve always done. It’s what we love. Our trade shows are more fun than anybody else’s. We get to take vacations and call them business expenses or, even better, product testing. Uh, not that I’ve ever done that, Mr. Tax Man, sir. But I’ve heard about it. I’m
Action Sports; Are We Still in That Business? Read More »
Yes. And no. The snowboard industry consolidation that started around 1995 or 96 could probably have better been called extermination. Literally hundreds of brands went away either because their founders got tired of losing money or because the Japanese stopped paying cash in advance for snowboards. Though there were exceptions, these brands didn’t get subsumed under the multi-brand umbrella
The Impact of Consolidation; Wasn’t That Over Years Ago? Read More »
I can’t be the only one it’s occurred to that skateboarding seems to have dodged its historical cycle of disappearing and being reborn every ten years. I think that’s a good thing, though shrinking to nothing and more or less starting over had the advantage of letting everything be fresh and rediscovered. True, sales fell from
Living in the Past- Or Not; The New Old Skateboarding Read More »
At the Surf Industry Conference last May, I was the last one to ask a question of a panel of very successful specialty retailers. I acknowledged that I was sure they would all continue to be successful, though I doubted they were representative of most retailers out there. And then I asked them, “So what happens in
Company Stores and Retail Consolidation; What’s a Core Store to Do? Read More »